


The Proof of the Pudding

by Astardanced77



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everybody Lives, Fluff, M/M, No angst here, SO MUCH FLUFF
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-15
Updated: 2016-03-15
Packaged: 2018-05-26 21:24:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6256441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astardanced77/pseuds/Astardanced77
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>StrivingArtist posted this prompt to Tumblr:</p>
<p>We always headcanon that Bilbo is this great cook. I always use it. We all do. The dwarves are always crazy about it. It’s great. Sometimes it seduces Thorin. </p>
<p>But what if he’s only an average cook in the Shire. I mean, he does fine, but he’s not the best. His pastries tend to be a bit lopsided. His pies are never really as towering as they ought to be. His chicken is dry sometimes. He uses too much garlic. He cannot, for the life of him, ever make a cake that doesn’t fall in the center a bit. It’s still tasty. His dwarves still love it, but Bilbo knows that they just don’t know what they’re missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Proof of the Pudding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [StrivingArtist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrivingArtist/gifts).



> Dear Strife - as you know I am an enormous fan of your writing. Your prompt got me thinking and I wanted to give you a small something as a thank you for the literally hours of entertainment you've granted me. Without further ado, I offer my first Hobbit fanfic. I hope it fits the bill!

Bilbo Baggins had a guilty secret. One that he could not tell a living soul.

The dwarves had just made it so easy. In their enthusiasm for all things baked, they had readily accepted Bilbo’s glib explanation that his apple flan was ‘rustic’. They had nodded enthusiastically at the ‘deconstructed’ lemon meringue pie. No-one had even queried Bilbo’s outright invention of ‘fondue’, following an unfortunate incident where the filling for a chocolate tart had failed to set. And the less said about the ‘upside-down cake’ the better.

With his newfound knowledge of dwarven history—imparted by Balin in his efforts to bring Bilbo up to speed for the job of consort that Thorin seemed so eager to bestow—Bilbo supposed that he could understand the dwarves’ position. The kitchens of Erebor, buried deep in the heart of the mountain, had been cut off from nearly every avenue of escape. Few had survived Smaug’s assault; fewer still the long, hard march to find a new home. Once established, Ered Luin had depended on all its inhabitants to provide the basic necessities. Luxury was scarce in the early days, with neither time nor resources for such fripperies as dessert. Over time, the delicate and time-consuming skills of puffed pastry making disappeared from the dwarven cooking repertoire in favour of hearty, stomach-filling stews and casseroles.

So it was not any surprise that his Company had greeted Bilbo’s culinary efforts with awed admiration. Indeed, Bilbo had a sneaking suspicion that Thorin’s first impassioned declaration of love was at least partially motivated by the two-and-a-half foot high croquembouche Bilbo had created for the coronation feast (and if the caramel was _just_ this side of over-cooked and the profiteroles not perfectly puffed, none seemed to notice). Certainly, the celebratory kiss came with slightly stickier whiskers than Thorin’s kisses were traditionally wont to have. And Bilbo did not begrudge them their gusto. But he alone knew the terrible truth.

_Bilbo Baggins was not a great baker._

He was a hobbit, so naturally he could cook. And he had been doing it for a number of decades now, so he’d picked up some skills along the way. But in the Shire he was considered a mediocre chef at best. Tasty—indeed some of his more adventurous flavour combinations were considered close to acceptable (after a suitable period of distrust and muttering)—but lacking that touch of finesse that characterised the truly remarkable. The lightness of Bell Gamgee’s sponge cake was a byword in the district. Camellia Sackville, in direct contrast to her sour personality, produced the most mouth-wateringly delicate orange and pistachio madeleines. The things old Fastolph Bolger could do with caramel lived on the memories of all that tasted them. Even little Primula Brandybuck—considered by the censorious to have been put on this good Middle Earth for the express purpose of turning her poor mother’s hair grey—could produce a strawberry shortcake that defied the sternest of critics.  

Against such a background, his illicit recipe for scones using fizzy, sweetened water and cream, rather than rubbing together the butter and flour as was proper, was a secret Bilbo would take with him to the grave.

Not that he thought his dwarves would cease to value him should more accomplished baker appear on the scene. Unquestionably, Thorin had made it very clear that he valued the many excellent qualities (and, lately, anatomical features) of his Burglar. Nonetheless, Bilbo, a hobbit who prided himself on his self-awareness, could admit in his heart of hearts that he was not entirely displeased that many months travel, a mountain range and hundreds of goblins stood between himself and the superior chefs of the Shire.

So when Thorin asked him late one evening if there was anyone from home he would wish to be present for their nuptials, Bilbo was able to reply with perfect truth in the negative. Certainly, he missed afternoons of comfortable gossip when his redoubtable grandmother, Adamanta, had invited herself for tea, but Bofur and Nori, and upon occasion Gloin, filled that gap nicely. He would admit he had enjoyed regaling Fili on his sickbed with tales of his cousin Drogo’s budding and clumsy flirtation with the aforesaid Miss Brandybuck, each of them trying in turn not to laugh at Kili’s own inexpert attempts with the impassive Elf Captain.

But now... Over the course of the mad months on their quest, the dwarves of the Company had become his family. It was an odd family for a hobbit, to be sure, but then he was an odd hobbit. And when all was said and done, the only person he really needed at their wedding to make it perfect was Thorin.

Conversation, and indeed all rational thought, ceased very shortly afterwards as Thorin answered this declaration with meticulous diligence.    

********************************************

All in all, Bilbo considered when he looked back on the affair, the wedding planning had been going too well. Admittedly, there had been a range of disagreements in the beginning but Bilbo felt they had been dealt with firmly and fairly. There had been the question of whether to invite the elves—Bilbo felt it was only polite to invite the neighbours; Thorin suggested that the _mibilkhagas_ would enter the mountain over his dead body (Bilbo won and invitations were duly issued). There had been the question of whether the ceremony should also include Bilbo’s coronation—Thorin was strongly in favour; Bilbo noted that Thorin’s coronation had taken five and a half hours and he would be damned if he was enduring that torture on his wedding day (Bilbo won and Thorin visibly sulked for three days). Then there had been the question of the honeymoon. Bilbo and Thorin had been unanimously in favour of seven blissfully uninterrupted days; Balin had vetoed on the grounds that a mountainful of hung-over dwarves, a visiting company of elves and an young, inexperienced Regent was an invitation to interspecies warfare (Bilbo sulked far less visibly for two days before admitting defeat).

But things were generally speaking on track. There was enough cooked apple pie filling stored carefully in the pantry for forty pies. Bilbo had firmly outsourced the agonising over the wedding garb to Dori. He had just as firmly banned Dori from barging into his chambers without advance notice, following what Nori (who had been the extremely unsympathetic recipient of a traumatised Dori’s confidences) now referred to as the incident with the whipped cream. (An equally traumatised Thorin had spent the next day fitting functional locks on all the doors.)

Floral table decorations were clearly out of the question; what vegetation Smaug’s rampage hadn’t incinerated, the various appendages of five separate armies had obliterated. Bilbo had let them go without regret. There was a limit, he felt, to the amount of time a grown hobbit could spend agonising over flower meanings before feeling like a pimply-faced tween again. In any case, Bilbo would have had to decimate every garden between the Shire and Rivendell to find enough flowers to fill the Great Hall of Erebor.

All, in fact, was going swimmingly. Except... Bilbo had not been entirely confident, but it seemed to him that Thorin was planning something.

The signs of Thorin Planning Something were generally easy to read. Firstly, there was the Casual Question. Thrown into the conversation with all the relaxed nonchalance of a faunt asking for a second sweet biscuit, the Casual Question might as well have come with an enormous glowing arrow pointing at it.

[The sapphire in Bilbo’s engagement ring was the direct result of a Casual Question about Bilbo’s favourite colour having been posed shortly after a particularly brain-scrambling snogging session. Its colour was an exact match for the thin line of Thorin’s irises, pupils blown wide, as he stared down at Bilbo when he...ahem, well.]

Secondly, there were the Unexplained Absences. Thorin would airily remark about an extra meeting added to his schedule or comment on his plan to add an extra training session with Dwalin. Bilbo would nod supportively and fail, yet again, to remind Thorin that he received his own copy of Thorin’s daily schedule every morning.

[The practice had started shortly after the battle. Thorin had refused to stay in bed any longer than it took to ensure his insides were no longer in danger of becoming his outsides. In desperation, Balin and Oin had drafted Bilbo to deliver afternoon tea to Thorin every day to bribe Thorin into taking a short rest. Bilbo thought that if he hadn’t already been head over heels for Thorin, those tranquil afternoons, sitting in Thorin’s chambers, amiably debating every topic under the sun as Thorin slowly healed, would have done the trick all over again.]

Next came the Second Guessing. Thorin would throw intense looks at Bilbo, brow deeply furrowed, while he thought that no-one was watching. He would obsessively question members of the Company about the likely reception of his plan. On numerous occasions, Bilbo would stumble across him in odd corners or corridors, where he would mutter some unconvincing excuse before beating a hasty retreat while his latest victim slumped in exaggerated relief behind him. It was at this stage that Bilbo often found himself wondering how to reconcile the stately, composed King of Erebor with the maniac currently inhabiting his chambers.

[Bilbo was not, of course, generally a participant in the Second Guessing. He had, however, received a number of desperate delegations from members of the Company at various times and been an unintended witness at least once. In hindsight, staring mutely at the back of Dwalin’s head while he threatened to “propose to the damned hobbit myself if you don’t stop yer damned shilly-shallying”, was not how Bilbo had envisaged a marriage proposal would commence. Happily, once Dwalin had made himself scarce, things had progressed more traditionally. The sight of Thorin, down on one knee as was the custom of Men, his face a picture of sincerity (albeit still a trifle pink), reaching slowly for Bilbo’s hand to cradle gently in his own, was one Bilbo would treasure forevermore. In the end, there had been no hesitation in his voice; only love permeating every syllable. To this day Bilbo did not know what grand proposal Thorin had planned, but he quietly thought it could scarcely have been more perfect than the one he had received.]  

Often the Second Guessing was accompanied by Nervous Fidgeting. It was a source of continual amazement to Bilbo that Thorin, decisive and determined in all other aspects of his life, should be such a ditherer in relation to the one thing of which he should by now be sure: Bilbo himself. When the Nervous Fidgeting got too much, Bilbo would organise a series of training bouts with whoever would volunteer (by this stage he was usually besieged by frustrated Company members, itching for an opportunity to face their King with even a practice blade).

[In times of particularly dire need, Bilbo would carefully lock the door of Thorin’s chambers and start removing items of clothing until Thorin cracked. Typically, Thorin could hold out at least until Bilbo started unlacing his shirt, but on one memorable occasion, Bilbo got only the top two buttons of his waistcoat undone. That had been two days before the unexpected proposal.]

This time, though, the signs were less clear. Certainly there were Unexplained Absences and a level of Nervous Fidgeting, but the Second Guessing, to the best of Bilbo’s knowledge, had not occurred. And crucially, there had been no Casual Question. Bilbo, on further thought, considered that a bit of Nervous Fidgeting in the lead up to a wedding was probably not unreasonable and gave the matter little further thought.

Later he would think he had never been so wrong in his life.    


End file.
